


Nothing New

by prepare4trouble



Series: Little By Little [36]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ezra doesn't run away, Ezra isn't 'up to' anything, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Realization that things are worse than thought, Visually Impaired Ezra Bridger, discussion of past injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 17:54:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12041133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prepare4trouble/pseuds/prepare4trouble
Summary: Sabine and Ezra have a talk.  It goes better than the last time.





	Nothing New

Until she walked through the door to the lounge, Sabine had assumed that she had the Ghost to herself.  It was the wrong time of day for anybody to be around.  Generally, when the ship was parked on the base, everybody found something to do there, returning only to eat, in the unlikely event that whatever was being cooked up in the commissary made nutri-bars sound appealing, or to sleep.

Of course, Ezra wasn’t on duty right now.  Sabine was reasonably sure that was only supposed to apply to off-world missions, but he seemed to have taken the ruling completely to heart, and resolved to do nothing but sit around all day every day.  The only exceptions being whatever it was that he and Hobbie were doing with the dokma, and watching the races at night.

It should be annoying.  It  _was_  annoying.  After all, there was no reason he couldn’t help out with stuff.  It was also understandable.  She didn’t want to spend too long dwelling on what she might be doing if their positions were reversed, but she doubted it would involve working her ass off around the base.  Not unless someone specifically ordered her to do that.

Or, maybe it would.  At least if she was keeping busy she would have less time to think about it.  Having nothing to do but sit around worrying wasn’t going to help anything, and from the way Ezra looked – the slumped posture, the blank look on his face – he had already spent far too long today dwelling on things that were beyond his control.

She remained where she was for a moment, waiting for Ezra to acknowledge her presence.  It took longer than it probably should have for her to realize that he wasn’t going to; he didn’t appear to have noticed her.

He was sitting on one of the benches that surrounded the holotable, his chin resting in his hand, his elbow resting on the table, staring vacantly into the space just ahead of him.  Sabine hesitated, watching him.  The expression on his face was, for the most part, blank and unreadable, but there was nothing positive in it.  That was how she knew for certain that he hadn’t noticed her; the instant he became aware of her presence, he would start to put on a show of being okay.  He was good at it, too, apparently.  He had been doing it for over a year without anybody noticing.

A year.  The idea of it still felt impossible to her.  Not that someone could keep a secret for that amount of time; she had kept – and was still keeping – some of her own.  The thing that shocked her, the thing that was difficult to believe, was that  _Ezra_  could do that.

It would have been impressive, if it didn’t make her want to cry.

Sabine took a step forward.  She was standing to Ezra’s left, at what should have been more or less the edge of his peripheral vision, only he didn’t have that anymore.  Or, if he did, the definition of it had shifted.  Where anybody else would notice movement out of the corner of their eye, Ezra saw nothing.

There was nothing wrong with his hearing though.  At least, not as far as she knew.  There was no reason why he wouldn’t have heard the door open.  From what she understood about Jedi and the Force, he should also have been able to sense her presence, the same way that Kanan did.  Kanan had always been able to do that, or at least for as long as she had known him.  Obviously he relied on it a lot more heavily now, and his ability to do it had grown stronger, but even back when he could see, Kanan had been able to sense the world around him.  Ezra should surely be able to do the same thing.

So, obviously Ezra’s mind was on other things, which given the circumstances, wasn’t surprising at all.

For a moment, she thought about leaving.  He still hadn’t noticed her; she could back silently away, hope that he didn’t notice the door for a second time, and go somewhere else, leave him alone to brood.  She couldn’t help but think back to the last time they had run into each other in this room.  It hadn’t gone well; it had ended with Ezra running out of the room and Sabine feeling terrible about something she had done, trying, and failing to help.

They had managed to patch things up the next day, but she was in no hurry to risk a repeat.  Ezra’s emotions seemed to be all over the place recently, and it was tough to predict what mood she might find him in.  Trying to engage with him when he wanted to be left alone was probably asking for trouble.

Of course, she didn’t know that he  _did_  want to be left alone.  Surely if it was solitude he was looking for, he would have gone to his quarters.  Sabine knew for a fact that Zeb wasn’t there – she had seen him heading off out of the base in the direction of the perimeter; she just hoped he hadn’t decided to go hunting the giant spiders again – so maybe Ezra was hoping for company after all. 

Sabine took another step forward, slow and deliberate.  She made sure to move herself closer to the center of his vision, and allowed her feet to make a sound on the floor. 

He noticed her this time.  Ezra twitched visibly in surprise at her sudden presence, then hastily rearranged his expression into a smile.  It might even have been a convincing one, if she hadn’t seen him a moment earlier.

He turned to look at her.  “Oh, uh… hey, Sabine,” he said.

She nodded in his direction.  “Hey yourself,” she said, playing it as casual as she could.  She would let him decide how the conversation was going to go.  “What’s up?”  

“I… What?”

Ezra frowned, as though he was completely confused by the question, like he had managed to convince himself that everything was fine, and then she had randomly and unexpectedly come along and implied there might be a problem with his perfect day.  She hadn’t even meant to imply anything was wrong, she had just been asking what he was doing, how he was.

“Nothing,” he told her, after a quick glance around the room, as though looking for something that would make the question make sense.

Sabine couldn’t help but smile, she tried to suppress it and hoped that he didn’t notice.  Again, if she hadn’t seen him a moment earlier, she might have been taken in by this.  “That was convincing,” she told him, making it sound like sarcasm even though it was actually the truth.  She slid into the chair opposite him, convinced now that there was actually something wrong; something more than the usual, and determined to get to the bottom of it.  “Okay, out with it,” she told him.

For a moment, Ezra didn’t react.  He stayed where he was, as though frozen.  The confused look remained plastered on his face, presumably because he hadn’t yet decided what to replace it with to keep the lie going.  Eventually, he sighed, then sagged defeatedly.  “Is it that obvious?” he asked.

She didn’t know how to answer that.  There was no good response.  If she told him that yes, it was obvious and she could see right through him, it would only make him work harder to hide.  If she told him the truth, that the lie would have been convincing, if only he had noticed her and started acting sooner, that would only draw attention to his deteriorating sight that had not allowed him to see her until he had moved.

“Well,” she settled for instead, “I know you pretty well by now.”  Ezra could take that any way he liked.  She watched him for his reaction, curious to learn which way he had chosen to take it, but he didn’t give anything away.  “So, go on then, what is it?” she asked.

Of course, there was a pretty good chance that it really was nothing.  Or at least nothing she didn’t already know.  What was happening to Ezra was horribly unfair, and she couldn’t blame him for feeling down.  And then of course there was the fact that Sato had removed him from active duty, leaving him with a lot of time on his hands to brood.  She reached across the table to put a hand on his arm, then thought better of it.  The last time she had touched him unexpectedly, he hadn’t responded well.  She pulled her hand back and waited for a response.

“It’s nothing,” Ezra told her.  “Nothing new, anyway.  Well, not really.”

Sabine nodded.  That was what she has expected.  She leaned forward anyway.  “‘Not really?’ Well now I’m curious,” she said.

“I, uh…”  Ezra glanced to his left, and then to his right, wide-eyed, as though looking for an escape.

“It’s okay,” Sabine told him.  “You don’t have to tell me.  Not if you don’t want too.”  She glanced around the room too, searching for a change of subject  She found nothing that wouldn’t be an obvious diversion tactic.  “So, what’s going on with the dokma?” she asked instead.  “I’ve seen you and Hobbie doing  _something_  out by the perimeter.  What are you up to?”

Ezra froze, his expression one of shock and horror.  He shook his head.  “Nothing,” he said.  “We’re not ‘up to’ anything, we’re just messing around.  Why would you think that?”

Sabine stared at him.  The reaction had been extreme and unexpected, and she found herself thrown off-kilter by it.  She backed away a little, and ran her fingers once through her hair.  “I didn’t mean ‘up to’ like you’re doing something wrong,” she explained.  It occurred to her now that maybe she should have meant it that way.  “I just meant, what are you doing?”  
  
“Nothing,” Ezra repeated vehemently.

Sabine shrugged.  Whatever that was about, it probably wasn’t important.  She leaned back in her chair and decided to drop the subject.  She had only brought it up to distract from less comfortable topics, and that hadn’t worked at all.  The number of dokma on the base had reduced dramatically over the past few days though, she wondered if there was any connection.  She didn’t ask.

“Hera said I can go on missions again,” Ezra told her.

“That’s gr…”  
  
“As soon as I learn how to do everything with my eyes closed,” he added quickly, before she could finish.

Sabine frowned.  She caught herself and tried to smooth out the expression before she answered.  It wouldn’t have made any difference; Ezra wasn’t looking at her.  He was facing in her direction, but she could see that his mind was somewhere else.

That couldn’t be right; Hera wouldn’t say that, it didn’t make any sense.  Ezra wouldn’t  _lie_  to her, of course, but he had been known to exaggerate, and something about that just didn’t ring true.  That didn’t mean – whatever Hera had said – that wasn’t what he had heard, but Ezra had years still before he was… before he would need to be able to do that.  Didn’t he?

No, she realized with a shock.  No, maybe he didn’t.  There had been words thrown around the day Ezra had told them, after he had disappeared, leaving Hera and Kanan to fill in the blanks.  Two of those words had been ‘significant impairment’, another one had been ‘severe’.  She had been too shocked to ask at the time; too shocked to even  _think_  about asking, and now things were beginning to make sense on their own.

They had told her he had about five years, but that was before his sight was completely gone.  Before that, it was going to get progressively worse, and eventually it was going to reach the point where it was essentially useless to him.

When was that going to be?

She had been thinking about it completely wrong.  Ezra had much less time than she had realized.  Once again, she was struck by the complete and utter  _unfairness_  of it, and she wanted to scream; to yell and vent her anger at the universe; to cry, and to plead for there to have been a mistake; to offer up a sacrifice in exchange for a cure.

It wouldn’t do any good.  There was nothing that she could do to stop it, and she had to remind herself again and again that no matter how much  _she_  hated it, it was so much worse for Ezra.  Watching her react like that wouldn’t be helpful.

It occurred to her that it had been some time since either of them had spoken.  Ezra was sitting very still, lost in his own thoughts, as though time had remained still for him.  It hadn’t, of course.  If only that were possible.

“Wait,” she said.  “I thought  _Sato_  made the decision to take you off missions.”  Maybe Hera had been given the unfortunate task of relaying Sato’s decision back to him.  Maybe this hadn’t come from her at all.  And if that was the case, they could begin working on an alternate plan to take to him, constructed by the people that knew Ezra best.  Something that would work in the meantime; something that didn’t involve him sitting around, waiting to go blind.

“He left it up to her,” Ezra explained.

“And  _this_  is what she came up with?”  No.  It still didn’t sound right.  It didn’t sound like Hera.  There had to be something else; some reason why she would make a decision like that.  Was there something about Ezra’s vision that she hadn’t been told?  A hundred horrible possibilities crammed their way into her head simultaneously and she screwed her eyes closed, trying to force them out again.

Ezra shrugged.  “There was other stuff too,” he said.

“ _More_  things you need to do?”  Like what?  What else could she possibly need from him?  If she was essentially asking him to get to Kanan’s level of awareness before he actually needed to do so, what else could she possibly want?  Hera would have her reasons for any decision she made, Sabine didn’t doubt that for a moment, but until she understood what they were, the whole thing felt horribly unfair.

Something in Ezra shifted suddenly.  Without him moving visibly, she could tell that he was suddenly back in the room with her, no longer lost in his own memory.  Their eyes connected for a brief moment, and she saw him react to her confusion.

He sighed, and took a breath.  “No.  Look… What I mean is.”  He stopped, allowed his hands to drop down to the tabletop, and began to drum his fingertips rhythmically.  “She gave me a choice.  But really, that was the only option.  Anything else would only… I’m going to need to be able to do that stuff anyway, right?  And this way I don’t have to see the droid.”

“Noisy?”

Ezra registered her use of the name he had given the med-droid, and smiled briefly.  “Well, I’m only going be able to see for so long, I don’t want to waste my time looking at his stupid face.”  He smiled nervously and there was an awkward pause as he appeared to notice what he had said.  He watched her apprehensively, waiting for her reaction.

Sabine didn’t understand this thing with the med-droid.  Her few run-ins with Noisy, she had found the droid to be helpful and a very useful resource in her attempt to learn more about the tactile alphabet.  And she had heard a rumor that some patients had been given plushies.  What was there not to like?  But she encountered the negative thoughts over and over again from different people on the base, so the chances were good that there was something to it.  Of course, she had never had the droid treat her for anything, maybe that gave people a different perspective on things.

She decided not to join in on the joke, it didn’t seem fair to laugh at the droid’s expense, especially when Noisy had been nothing but helpful to her.  “Or the office,” she said instead.  “All that white?  It’s like a blank canvas just begging to be painted.”

Ezra frowned, then relaxed noticeably, as though that hadn’t been the response he had been hoping for, but it was good enough.  “Maybe you should, then,” he said.

“Maybe I will.”

They fell into silence, but it was a comfortable one.  Ezra’s drumming fingers slowed, and then stopped completely.  The forced smile was gone now, but the frown he had worn earlier hadn’t replaced it.  

“Was that the choice, then?” Sabine asked him.  “Learn to do…” she didn’t want to say it.  She didn’t understand  _why_  she didn’t want to say it, but she didn’t.  “…all the stuff, or visit the droid?”  Surely the droid couldn’t be  _that_  bad.

“No, of course not.  There’s other stuff too, but it’s all stupid, this is the only way I can be sure she’ll let me back.”

Sabine nodded as though that made sense.  Whatever had happened between Ezra and Hera, it must have been a difficult conversation and she didn’t envy either one of them.  She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table and holding his gaze.  “Why don’t you tell me that it is, then maybe we can work something out.”

Ezra hesitated, eyes flicking between her and the door, like he was contemplating making a break for it; running away again.  She couldn’t blame him, he obviously didn’t want to talk about it, and she was insisting on pushing the subject.

She needed to back off.  She did so physically, leaning back in her seat in the hopes that it would put him at ease.  “So, been to the dokma races recently?” she blurted.  The races were, after all, Ezra’s go-to subject changer, and hopefully if she could steer the topic away from his eyes, he wouldn’t run away again

Ezra flinched like she had hit him, then went very still.  He watched her closely, squinting slightly as he did, as though he were looking for something.  “Why?” he asked.

“Um…” because she had thought it was a nice, safe subject.  Apparently she had been wrong.  This was the second time in their conversation that she had mentioned the dokma, and the second time Ezra had been weird about it.  Whatever that was about, it extended beyond whatever he and Hobbie were doing out by the perimeter, to the races themselves.

On the positive side though, he no longer looked like he was about to run.

“Just wondering,” she said.

He continued to watch her, like he was waiting for her to do or say something.  Sabine sat still, not sure how to proceed.

“Be honest,” Ezra told her.

Sabine scowled.  “I  _am_  being honest!” she insisted.  “I just thought you might want to talk about som…”

“No, I mean me,” Ezra explained.  “That was the first thing Hera said I needed to do; I have to be honest about things, tell you guys what’s going on with…” he waved a hand vaguely in front of his face.  “…everything,” he finished.

Sabine looked at him in silence, reluctant to interrupt now that he was talking.  For someone who had spent so long hiding that there was even a problem to begin with, that was a big thing to ask.  She understood why Hera had said it, but it was still a big thing.

It occurred to her that by telling her this instead of walking away from the conversation, Ezra was beginning to practise some of that honesty already.

“She also wants me to have a plan for when things go wrong,” he said quietly.  “But like I told her, things go wrong every time we go out; I can’t plan every little thing, we make it up as we go.”

Sabine nodded.

“She said I need to show her that I can still do that, but she won’t tell me how I’m supposed to prove I can think on my feet.  Without actually  _doing_  it, that is.  But then she said that if I can do everything I can do now, but without seeing, I can forget the other stuff, so…” he tailed off, waved a hand in a loose circle in the air, indicating the course that the conversation had taken, and then shrugged.

Sabine considered what he had said.  She could see where he was coming from, but she could understand Hera’s point of view as well.  Ezra really did need to be ready for anything that might happen.  That didn’t necessarily mean he needed to know every twist and turn a mission was going to take before they even left, and plan what he was going to do, but it did mean he needed ways to cope with a wide variety of things that could go wrong.  And then he needed alternate coping methods too, for when the first, or even the second, contingency plan failed.

Of course, learning to ‘see’ like Kanan did would be the ultimate coping strategy, and he was going to need that ability soon anyway.  So much sooner than she had realized.

“You think I’m an idiot, don’t you?” Ezra said.

“Well, yeah.  I’ve been telling you that for years.”  She forced herself to smile, but she didn’t feel it.  She only hoped her efforts to fake it were more convincing than his.  “I’m glad it’s finally sinking in.”

He looked at her for a moment, expression caught somewhere between irritation and relief.  His eyes were narrowed slightly, and she couldn’t tell wonder whether he was squinting, or simply frowning at her.

“Thanks,” Ezra said.

“For?”

“For insulting me; acting normal around me.”  He sighed deeply.  “You wouldn’t believe the things some people have been doing, or saying.   It’s…” He smiled.  She didn’t think he ever intended that one to be believable.

“Hasn’t it gotten any better?”

He had mentioned that before; people acting strangely around him, conversations stopping, unwanted sympathy.  It hadn’t surprised her, it was just what people did.  Sabine had passed the information on to Kanan.  She hadn’t  _really_  thought he would be able to do anything about it, of course, but on some level she had still hoped.  It wasn’t done maliciously, of course, but it felt different when you were on the receiving end.

Ezra shrugged in response to her question.  “I dunno.  Maybe.  Maybe it’s old news now.  I’ve mostly been keeping away from people.  Except for Hobbie, and some of the other pilots.”  He winced.  “Wedge forgave me for yelling at him anyway, so that’s good..”

Wedge had been the unfortunate recipient of Ezra’s frustrations, which had been particularly unfair, because he had been off-base when Ezra’s news had broken and he had genuinely no idea why he was being shouted at for asking how Ezra was.

“Told you he would,” Sabine assured him.  “He seems like a pretty easygoing guy, and you were having a bad day.”

“I was having the  _worst_  day,” Ezra told her, and smiled a little shakily, but it was, finally, a genuine smile.

Sabine smiled back at him, she couldn’t think of anything to say.  She had never been good at this stuff, she barely knew how to handle her own emotions, outside of picking up a paintbrush.  Other people?  No chance.

“Hey,” she said, mostly just to fill the silence, “did I ever tell you about the time I broke my hand?”

Ezra frowned and shook his head.  “No, when did that happen?”

She shrugged.  “It was back when I was at the academy.  A training exercise went wrong, I broke five bones.  One of them pretty much shattered.”

Ezra winced sympathetically.

“A bit more than that, please.  I actually heard them crunch.”

The wince deepened slightly, and Sabine nodded.

“That’s more like it.  I mean, it healed up, obviously.  Mostly.  We had access to a lot more bacta there than we do here.  But it took a while.”  She unconsciously flexed the fingers of her right hand as she spoke.  “I was flying again in days, but fine motor control was pretty much….  I didn’t have a lot of strength for quite some time.”

Ezra nodded, his eyes were on her hand as she spoke.

“I couldn’t draw,” she said.  Her face crumpled slightly at the thought and she pulled her hand closer to her body, protectively.  “I mean, not well.  My hand ached, everything came out shaky…”

“I bet you were still better at it than me,” he interrupted.

She rolled her eyes.  “Well, yeah.  Goes without saying, really.  But, I know it’s not the same as your problem, but it was pretty awful, you know?  Art was my one release from that place, and suddenly it was just… gone.”

“Sure,” Ezra nodded.  “It wasn’t gone, though.  Even if you had to find another way to do it, you would have.”

“Well, I thought it was gone,” Sabine said.  “There was this other guy there.  He couldn’t draw to save his life, but he made music.  He wrote it, he played it, it was amazing.  And he and I were kind of the odd ones out.  We were good students, but we didn’t quite fit in there, you know?”

Ezra nodded again, taking in every word.

“So one day, during a bit of downtime, I was sketching something with my left hand.  It was pretty good, too.  I mean, not perfect, but I was thinking  _I can do this, I can make this work._   Then along comes this guy.  He sits down next to me and watches for a moment, then he looks at me, looks at the sketch, and says,  _’I’m so sorry.’_ ”

She was no longer looking at Ezra, lost in the memory, she gazed through him.

“I just…” she floundered slightly.  “I didn’t cry,” she said, forcefully.  “But I… It just hit me hard, you know?  Hard enough that all this time later it still bothers me.”

Ezra shifted slightly, then nodded.  “It sounds…” he tailed off.

“It sounds like I’m complaining about nothing,” Sabine finished for him.  “I know.  All I’m trying to say is this.  If you ever need me to beat anybody up for you – and I’m not implying you can’t do it yourself, it’s just that Jedi thing holding you back – just say the word.”

Ezra grinned.  “I’ll bear that in mind.  And if you ever need a shoulder to cry on…”

Sabine formed her hand into a fist, leaned across the table and punched him on the arm.  “I  _didn’t_  cry,” she repeated.

“Still, you know where to find me,” he finished with a smirk.

“I  _knew_  I shouldn’t have told you that story,” Sabine said with a sigh.  She was glad she did though, it seemed to have helped.  She shuffled slightly in her seat, getting comfortable, straightening her spine, then took a deep breath.  “Okay,” she said, taking the conversation back to the beginning.  “So these conditions of Hera’s, tell me more.  Did she say anything else?”

Ezra shook his head.  “No, not really, that’s about it,” he told her.

She wasn’t sure whether she believed that.  It wasn’t that Ezra would lie to her, but he could have misunderstood.  Or explained badly enough that  _she_  misunderstood.  “I get what you’re saying about learning how to do everything without seeing,” she said.  “But it sounds like she’s offering you an easier option.  Why don’t you take it, and work on the other stuff in the meantime.”

“Because it’s pointless,” Ezra insisted.  “The more time I waste on that stuff, the less I have to work on the important stuff.”

He might be right.  Or he might be completely wrong.  She didn’t know, and there was no way for her to know.  Kanan had picked things up pretty quickly.  It hadn’t felt that way at the time, it had been an agonising six months of watching him fail time after time, watching him crumple under the frustration, watching him desperately searching for something right in front of him, refusing help.

She didn’t want to go through that again with Ezra, and more than that, she didn’t want Ezra to go through that.  Maybe he was right, learning everything now, even if he didn’t need it yet, would prevent a lot of pain in the future.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t visit the med droid, and start to plan ahead more and work on talking to people instead of running away.  He had managed to stay through this entire conversation, after all.  That was a good start.  All he needed now was… everything else.

“Well,” Sabine shrugged.  “The strategy planning offer is still open, I know we can come up with a plan.  Just say the word.”

He nodded as he slid out of his seat and headed to the door.  “I’ll bear that in mind, thanks.”

His hand touched the doorframe as he walked through; probably nothing, but it reminded her of Kanan in a way that made her stomach twist.

She sighed and flexed the fingers of her right hand.  Sometimes, she still felt an echo of the pain from the break.  But not today.  Today, the only pain she could feel was internal, and there was nothing she could do to fix it.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are loved, as always.


End file.
